In the past couple of weeks, we have been given a couple of foretastes of what may lie ahead for 2012. First, there is the fuss over President Barack Obama’s failure to disassociate himself from or apologize for statements by the comedian Bill Maher, who has given $1 million to a super-PAC supporting Obama’s re-election. Second, there’s the ludicrous attempt to make an issue of Obama’s embrace (literally — there’s video), while at Harvard Law School, of a professor named Derrick Bell. The Bell story, with video, is the parting gift of Andrew Breitbart, who died of a heart attack March 1 at the age of 43 – – much too young even for a right-wing hit man…

I wrote last week about the competitive sensitivity game that dominates our politics these days, in which all sides leap to take insincere offense at remarks by others and demand apologies which, by their very nature, are equally insincere. Maher actually defended Limbaugh, calling the campaign against him a “fatwa.” For his troubles, he was attacked by a Wall Street Journal columnist for using an Islamic term as a metaphor. Typical liberal hypocrite, was the columnist’s point.

You can parse the difference between Limbaugh and Maher if you want — one is an overt political pamphleteer and the other a comedian whose scorn is bipartisan, even if on average it tilts left. But the ideal solution would be if everyone just developed a thicker skin.